Creativity Quote by Trevor Rabin

Rabin’s line has the blunt practicality of a career musician who’s spent decades choosing sounds the way directors choose lenses: if it doesn’t serve the scene, it doesn’t belong in the shot. Calling the guitar a "color" drains it of its usual rock-myth baggage. No heroics, no identity badge, no sacred instrument. Just pigment on a palette, one option among many.

The intent is almost clinical: he’s talking about function, not nostalgia. Rabin came up in a world where the guitar was often the main character, especially in arena rock and prog. So the subtext lands with a quiet provocation: the guitar is no longer automatically central, not even for a guitarist. In film scoring and modern production, texture wins over virtuosity. A synth pad can carry emotion as effectively as a riff; a few well-placed harmonics can do more than a solo. When he says he hasn’t been playing "too much lately", it’s less confession than professional triage.

Context matters: Rabin’s post-Yes career leans heavily into composing for picture, where music is subordinate to story and timing. The quote also nods to a wider cultural shift. Guitar culture used to promise authenticity; now it competes with infinite, frictionless timbres inside a laptop. Rabin isn’t mourning that. He’s signaling discipline: restraint as taste, and taste as the real instrument.